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Auction: 21003 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 74

The British War Medal awarded to Lieutenant-Colonel A. M. Reid, M.C., T.D., Royal Army Medical Corps, who won his Military Cross with the Machine Gun Corps on the Somme - he was latterly a prominent medical man

British War Medal 1914-20 (Major A. McK. Reid), official corrections, very fine

[M.C.] Edinburgh Gazette 16 November 1916:

'For conspicuous gallantry in action. He displayed great courage and determination, in collecting and organising men of different units, and consolidating a new line.'

The best biography for Andrew McKie Reid was penned by The Royal College of Surgeons:

'Andrew McKie Reid was born on 14 April 1893 and educated at Liverpool University. In 1914 he interrupted his undergraduate career to be commissioned in the King's Liverpool Regiment, and was awarded the Military Cross in 1916 when serving on the Somme with the Machine Gun Corps. In 1918 he was wounded and taken prisoner, and after the war returned to Liverpool University where he was made President of the Guild of Undergraduates, and qualified with distinction in 1921. He was also responsible for re-forming the Officers Training Corps which he commanded from 1932-38.

He held junior appointments as house physician to the Liverpool Royal Infirmary, house-surgeon at the London Hospital, and clinical assistant at Moorfields, thus starting his specialist career in ophthalmology. He passed the examinations for the DOMS in 1923 and the FRCS in 1925, and then spent a year of postgraduate study in Vienna. In 1926 he returned to Liverpool on appointment as consultant ophthalmologist to St Paul's Eye Hospital which he continued to serve, except for the period of the Second World War, till he retired in 1958. He also had teaching duties in the University, and in the School of Tropical Medicine.

In 1939 he commanded a General Hospital (RAMC) with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, and took it to campaigns in Norway, North Africa and India. He was awarded the Territorial Decoration in 1942, and never lost his interest in military affairs.

He returned to civilian practice in 1946 and dominated the specialty of ophthalmology in Liverpool. He was President of the Liverpool Medical Institution in 1959 and was later elected an honorary member. He preserved a close link with the Royal College of Surgeons by serving on the Court of Examiners from 1950 till 1956.

After retiring from his hospital appointment in 1958 he continued in private practice, but had time to spare to develop his interests in politics and music, as a member of the Liverpool City Council from 1961 till 1971, and as Chairman of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society. He was a Freemason, an Officer of the Order of St John, and an active supporter of the Anglican Cathedral.

Andrew Reid lost his first wife in 1945, and married again in 1966. When he died suddenly on 15 February 1973, while dictating letters and looking out at his garden, he was survived by his second wife and a son and daughter of his first marriage.'

He left a moving account of saving the eyesight of a comrade on 2 July 1916:

'Sat. night thank goodness, was emphatically quiet just a few shells. An infantryman in the next bay to where I was firing one of my guns, got a bit of shrapnel in the eye. I heard it passed down the line when they were calling for stretcher bearers. They had taken him into a dugout & put his field dressing on when I wandered along.

Fortunately I had a wee case of instruments handy containing amongst other things a probe / syringe, an eye 'spud', also some cocaine & atropine eye discs, and in a wee dugout only 3 ft high but concrete, by the light of two inches of wax candle held on the man’s forehead & spluttering grease over his face & with the continual dull vibration of shell after shell, just audible thro' the thick concrete & sandbags, I managed to get the piece out. It was well embedded & if it hadn’t been got out would have prob caused iritis or worse. I shoved some atropine in after to dilate, & keep dilated, the pupil. Course I used cocaine as anaesthetic. I was jolly glad of the opportunity of doing a bit of sawboning again & after all it prob. saved the man's eye (rt eye too).' (https://www.rlbuht.nhs.uk/staff-blogs/st-paul-s-eye-unit-blog/andrew-mckie-reid-part-2/, refers)

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Sold for
£130

Starting price
£50